Announced at today’s AKB48 Janken Tournament 2016 at Kobe World Memorial Hall, AKB48 will setup a new sister group in Summer 2017: STU48.

As soon as the Janken Tournament was over, the curtains dropped on the crying AKB48 member Tanabe Miku, who was awarded the title of Janken Queen 2016. Rumors of AKB48 sister groups for Naha, Sendai and Sapporo have been swirling for a while, so when a map of Japan was projected it came to no surprise, but the reveal of a group for the Setouchi region did.

Their official web site has been launched, and the official announcement video is uploaded on Youtube.

The region of Setouchi encompasses the areas on the islands Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu that border the Seto Inland Sea. The group will represent 7 prefectures that touch said sea: Yamaguchi, Hiroshima, Okayama, Hyogo, Ehime, Kagawa and Tokushima.

STU48 is a sister group not based on a Japanese city, but instead their theater is on board a ship that is planned to sail throughout its namesake Seto Inland Sea.

This brings the current and future 48family to 10 groups, including the Bangkok, Manila and Taipei groups that have yet to debut.

akb, nmb, ske, hkt, snh, jkt, ngt. There would be 23124938 more to come, so stay tuned.

DoSHachiko

SNH is no longer part of the 48 family. They rebelled against Aki-P and pretty much said, “Yeah, we’re an independent group.” after making their own groups in China without permission.

lol48

should we expect a war between AKBG and SNHG in 2048?

lwavesurfer

Really? I must have missed the news.

Curious

Whats the most popular 48 group as of now?

lwavesurfer

in my opinion, it’s HKT mostly because of Sasshi, Sakura, and Haruppi.

surfboardt

Speaking of 48G, I just finished the 3rd chapter of Liar! Undercover the Truth, and there is an Aki-P parody in one of the chapter’s endings. It’s not subtle at all roflhttp://i.imgur.com/wiZIshO.png

lwavesurfer

Jesus take the wheel.

girlymatsu

WHO ASKED FOR THIS

aainaa

OMG!! I’m a casual fans of 48G but this is too much.. NGT48 do not even debut yet.. thsy should focus on that 1st.. people will only laugh at this.. how many more Japanese school girls they want to make into idol? neglecting their education & all.. it’s like 20 out of 40 student in a class are idols (well maybe a bit exaggerating)..

I love idols but 48G dominance made me bored..
I wish they focus more on current groups & make 48G ‘great’ again.. just look at HKT48 songs this year (&even AKB).. trash songs.. they should focus in making good music first.. Yeah I know It’s all about the MONEY MONEY MONEY.. Yeah who wouldn’t want to board a ship with their fav idol..

No.
because many people like them and having an idol group as a company (ex Toyota – Team8) is a nice thing, it attracts people, especially men who has money.

even though the songs are boring (not always) these groups represent many things that professional entertainment cannot reflect. especially group spirit, working hard with the fans, dedication, honest feelings. these things cannot be seen if someone only looking at the surface. tho, AKB is not the best example of this but it’s the most accessible for foreign people…

i’m not talking about Sashihara Rino level famous idols and hype entertainment with them, and company powered exploitation of the idol-fan relationship through gimmicks. these disgusting things that were bulit upon the foundation, the Japanese idol culture.

TruthSpeaker

I have nothing against Idol Groups. Its just that too many 48 groups have been announced and many are yet to debut. And the ones that debuted,their quality of songs is not stable.
Also having such huge 48 member group,I fail to recognize/identify many of the Idols in them. The fact they need to fight it out to get better positions in their singles PV can build enormous pressure on the Idols.

Risa

I need to get this out of my system: STU!? I seriously read STFU (*shut-the-f*-up) first *LOL*

How many groups do they already have? I mean, I know JE and Exile Tribe have tons of groups too, but even with all graduated and Junior (or however they are called) members from both groups together, it seems there are only 1/8 of the number 48/46 girls.

Don’t they run out of girls that apply? I mean, by now, almost every girl between 11-20 is probably part of one of their groups. Are these sister groups even selling? Are people buying their stuff? I don’t understand how this is supposed to work…